Tuesday, January 10, 2006

OK, now that you’ve read those three insightful yet very depressing articles allow me to rant my little brains out.

Recently I’ve been hearing an awful lot about child prostitution rings overseas but very little about any in my own backyard. So when I find out a town less that 50 miles from my very home is the epicenter of child prostitution in the United States I get a little upset.

Not because of its proximity to me but rather that it’s happening at all. I mean what sort of sick bastard abducts and manipulates children to be used for sex? Also what sort of sick bastard is paying for this? These are kids as young as 12. It’s just pathetic on so many levels.

The articles do a great job of exposing this horrible crime and that’s a wonderful thing. The only way to get rid of the darkness is to let in the light.

Let me get one little shot in on something I heard when I brought this topic up at work the other day. First some damn fool tried to make this a racial issue by blaming in on the black guys who were pimps. Of course she used some pathetic racial slur that I will not repeat. Some other fool simply blew it off, as there is nothing we can do. Good Lord how I loathe pessimists. See I disagree this Mr. Pessimistic. I thinks there’s a definite course of action we should take.What action can you take against a pimp? Well I’m glad you asked because I have a rather simple plan because as always I’m here to help.

First we must bring down the hammer on anyone who abducts and/or coerces children into prostitution. How severe should we be? I think seriously there are grounds to make this a very serious federal crime. Why federal? I really think this is a violation of these children’s Constitutional rights. Yes I’m serious. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution outlaws slavery. These girls are slaves. Therefore their Constitutional rights as American Citizens have been violated. So we should put these pimps and their accomplices who keep these kids bound with fear in a cold dark place for a very long time.

Second we need a great deal of rehabilitation for these girls. We cannot simply free them from the shackles of prostitution and throw them back out into society and expect them to thrive. The pimps picked most of these girls because they lacked self-esteem or had some learning disability or lived in an abusive home or some other social handicap. They were already falling through the cracks. Once they’ve endured an ordeal like this God only knows what damage has been done. So we can’t expect them to survive without offering them the therapy and education they need. Remember you cannot end abuse in a society by jailing the abusers. You must also rehabilitate the victims. Because that’s abuse works. It’s a vicious circle. The abused often go from abusive relationship to abusive relationship or become abusers themselves.

If my time at St. Wendelin schools taught me nothing else it taught me this, that we will be judged on how we treat the least of our brothers and sisters. These poor lost souls that are child prostitutes need us. We cannot abandon them. What sort of society abandons its children? Not one I would be at all proud of.